Echoes of a Last Word
by Iyrsiiea
Summary: Three individuals. Three deaths. One common goal, which in the end was fruitless: survival. *REVIEWS HIGHLY APPRICIATED*
1. Echoes

Echoes.

That's all she hears now. That's all that she's been hearing. It's all she'll ever hear until her dying moment, which comes nearer and nearer with every pained breath.

Echoes, skittering and her own heart attempting to deny death.

It had been so long since she heard humans: The steady rhythm of feet pitter-pattering on the deck, the soft rustle of cloth not made stiff by drying blood, the sweet symphony that was speech.

It had been so long…

She dared not open her eyes. They had been closed all this time, afraid of seeing what she might be sharing the room with. Whether it was torn and mutilated human corpses, or the grotesque things the corpses became, it was probably best she didn't know.

But in the absence of one of her senses, the others overloaded.

The blood in her mouth was a constant, no matter how much she swallowed. The metallic tang was prominent. Her tongue was bleeding from biting down in an attempt to keep from screaming.

Her body ached everywhere. Muscles she hadn't been aware of shrieked. Her side was an epicenter of agony, her shoulder being another. Her ribs were broken, possibly puncturing an organ. Her wrenched shoulder made the use of her left arm unlikely. Both of her legs were shot, too sore for running any distance.

Every single wound, both major and minor, demanded attention. Every exquisite thrum of pain was amplified, multiplied tenfold.

If she had wanted to leave, she doubted she could have.

The pain, the silence, the blood. She had expected them. But out of all that she could sense, it was her sense of smell that baffled her.

She could not smell decay.

Oh yes, she smelled blood. Blood mixed with vomit and excrement. Blood and fear. But she could not smell the unique and revolting stench of rotting flesh. It was as if there were no bodies at all, just the blood.

She knew better.

The bodies were up and moving.

No matter how impossible it should have been, no matter how hard she disbelieved, no matter that everything she had seen, heard, tasted, touched, smelled, and knew had said it could not happen, the bodies of the fallen had risen to make more.

And these weren't zombies like in the horror vids. These things were smart. They moved fast. And they sure as hell didn't want your brain.

They just wanted to rip you apart.

In her less sane moments, she wondered why the things insisted that they were in as many pieces as possible. Wasn't that counter-productive, destroying the body so it was useless to them? It made no sense.

Then again… nothing had made sense since they came to Aegis 7.

She was in limbo between a comatose state and utter insanity. For the first… five hours of being in her current hiding spot, she'd been perfectly still. Both in body and mind. She ceased all thought processes and simply sat, almost like in stasis.

Then for thirty minutes she whispered. Hummed. Even sang a little bit.

The song had been a lullaby, something that was still clinging in her mind even after the horror ripped everything else out. There was no audience that she was aware of, so she didn't care that her voice was hoarse and off-key.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

When the nothing shines upon,

You let out your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle all the night.

Then the traveler in the dark,

Thanks you for your little spark.

He could not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so."

She'd long after fallen back into silence when the occasional skitter outside her hiding spot became full-fledged steps. The feet had stilled at the sound of her voice, but then continued on their way, leaving her to the dark. She remained quiet.

Sleep was coming, but she couldn't rest. She didn't know if she wanted to sleep. Sleep would be a token of surrender. Giving up. But she really wanted to stop. Stop fighting, stop hurting, stop living. She wasn't even fighting, really. Just delaying the inevitable.

A thought stirred in her lethargic mind.

She hadn't finished her song.

"Though I know not what you are,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star…"

Suddenly, adrenaline rushed through her system. The fog of sleep was gone. She was more alert and awake than she had been for nearly a day by her reckoning.

She heard something new. A rustle.

An inch from her.

She risked opening her eyes, and was rewarded.

All that her traumatized, insane, jumbled mind could think to say was "Why?"

The semi-sentient, mutated moving corpse responded by digging its bladed appendages deep into her torso. It lifted her off of the deck, shaking her and ripping into her at the same time. Shock overruled the pain, and she felt nothing as it began to quickly and viciously rip off chunks of flesh.

She closed her eyes.


	2. Blood

Blood.

The sticky red fluid was everywhere. Smeared on the sides of the vent, in handprints along the bottom, and he wasn't sure how but there was some splattered on the top part. Some was dry.

Some was sickingly fresh.

The lack of sound other than the occasional skitters and his own movements terrified him. The flickery flashlight he had in his mouth didn't help much. The sound of his breathing echoed in the vent, making him feel obvious and exposed.

Not for the first time Fred wondered why in the hell he'd let Travis talk him into this.

Oh sure, he sounded logical and smart in the well-lit hallway, with a nice little escape plan set up and everything. But up here?

He would have told him to fuck himself with the damn little chip Fred now held in his hand and a ten-foot pole.

"Damn motherfucker tells me, 'Oh it's really simple, Fred. You just gotta climb through the vents to the dock control and put the chip in. Easy as pie!' But what the cocksucker _didn't_ say was the goddamned vents were fucking scary as hell!"

Continuing to mutter curse words to himself, he clambered through the blood-slicked vent, checking his locator beam when he reached a turn.

"Why in the hell did we leave Annie back there? She would've done this no problem, the little freakazoid goth girl… I can hear her now 'Fred you spineless chip! Can't even crawl through a bloody vent.' But no, we had to leave our medic back there, in that little crawlspace. She's been alone for, what, eighteen hours?! Crazy psycho bitch's probably _eaten_ all the monster things by now."

Fred stopped. Memories were crashing down on him. Teasing Annie and Travis about being 'lovebirds', calling Annie a 'psycho goth freak', getting chased by a pissed Annie with a scalpel. Seeing her, bloodied and bruised on the floor, refusing to leave, telling them to move on without her…

…and, God she's probably…

"She's probably _dead_."

Fred couldn't hold back a sob at the though of his little sister dead.

Earlier memories stirred. Playing tag in the hydroponics deck, chasing her down in the zero-gee as teens, singing her 'Twinkle twinkle little star' to bed…

It was like one of those mutated things had torn a hole in his chest. And he wanted them to finish the job.

He paused. Then a feeling welled up in him, strong enough to mask the pain.

Disgust.

"Ah fuck, I'm turning into a whiny emo like Annie! No way in hell am I going down without a fight!"

So, with that sentiment in mind, Fred struggled on.

Eventually, he reached his destination. Popping out the grate, he slided out of the cramped airduct and gave his surroundings a through one-over. Terminals he didn't understand, fancy doodads, a few personal effects, and lots of blood. But no bodies.

This set him on high alert immediately. Missing bodies means more monsters.

He lifted his plasma cutter to eye level. He was thankful beyond words that Travis had given him the only cutter between them. The cutter's tri-beam sighting grazed over the computers and terminals, pausing briefly over the dark corners and wall panels. Once he ascertained that the room was currently clear, he checked the screens for the button Travis told him to press.

Back before the fucking creepy vent, before losing the other cutter, before leaving Annie, Travis had been scouring the comms when he found a message from the USG _Kellion_. Apparently the distress beacon had been picked up, and they'd sent a mech crew to fix their ship.

Like the fucking _ship_ needed fixing. They needed to fix _reality_, more like.

The _Kellion_ was their ticket off the _Ishimura_. But in his search for escape, Travis had found one little problem. After the freaky 'Marker' thing (One of the causes of all this fucked up shit in Fred's mind) had been shipped up to them from the planet below, the fucking Captain (The other reason for their current fucked-up status in his opinion) put in a no-fly order, thus locking down all the blast doors.

They needed to unlock those doors before the _Kellion_ could smash into them like a bug on the windshield.

Finding the weirdo little symbol Travis had described to him, Fred pushed it, revealing a slot for the microchip with the hacking program Mr. 'I'm a super-duper spy hacker!' had cobbled together.

He hoped beyond hope it would work.

The sound of a light skitter behind him sent a shockwave of adrenaline and fear down his spine, and faster than he'd though himself capable of Fred did a one-eighty.

The cutter snapped up to take aim and fired at the monstrosity's arm just as quickly. The thing shrieked inhumanly, and the bladed appendage dropped to the floor. The creature hissed at him, what was left of it's eyes seemingly glaring at him in pure hatred, and it lunged, it's other arm stretched out to remove his head from his shoulders.

Fred jumped back, but he wasn't quite fast enough and he felt a searing pain in his neck.

Bringing one hand up to his neck to stop the wound from bleeding, he brought the cutter to bear and fired every last round at the mutated corpse until it was just a pile of indistinguishable flesh, all the while screaming bloody murder.

Fred dropped the empty plasma cutter and began to inspect the wound. Using the reflective surface of an inactive computer screen, he came to the conclusion that he was royally fucked. The thing's blade had missed all the important veins, but it was still deep, and it was bleeding like mad.

"If only Annie was here. She'd have me patched up in a heartbeat."

His mind strayed to Annie, and the realization that he was going to die hit him harder than a sack of bricks.

He smiled.

Glancing at the computer panel he'd put the chip in, he saw that it had worked. Knowing his job was complete made everything all the more easier.

A small thought struck him. Why not make it harder for the slimy motherfuckers when they tried to get his body?

He climbed into the vent, replaced the grate, and started crawling again. He stopped over an opening in the bottom, incapable of continuing. Somewhat pleased with himself, he rested his head on the edge, breathing in the stale but clean air. He removed his hand from his neck, letting the blood flow uninterrupted. It dripped through the opening, staining the deck below.

As his breathing slowed, he allowed a smile to grace his lips. He whispered one last goodbye, which echoed throughout the vent.

"Bye Annie. See you in hell."


	3. Pain

Pain.

As the magnets in his boots jarringly pulled his entire left leg forward with every step, the stiff leather rubbed against the gash on his ankle, slowly tearing it open. He put his other foot forward to be yanked back down to the deck and the muscles in his right leg protested with a sharp ache.

In the past thirty-five hours, pain hasn't been a stranger to Travis Oeth. Running nonstop, not eating, being attacked by alien zombies, leaving your girlfriend to likely die and also sending the man you hoped to call your brother-in-law someday to his death will do that to you.

But the varied sores of his body were nothing compared with the burning in his heart. It was frozen fire, smoldering and stinging and throbbing like nothing any wound of the flesh could cause. The cold fire had started when he saw Annabel on the floor, bleeding… She was begging them to leave her. He couldn't do it, it was unimaginable.

He wasn't quite sure how Fred had dragged him away. Sure, the guy was strong, but Travis wasn't a lightweight. Must have been the adrenaline.

Only an hour ago, he'd sent Fred to insert the hacking chip into the system so the _Kellion_ could dock. And every second of that hour, Travis monitored Fred's RIG.

Twenty minutes ago, Fred's heart rate skyrocketed. Eighteen minutes ago, it slowed. His status read _fatally injured_. Ten minutes ago, his heart rate slowed dangerously. His location changed back to the airduct.

Two minute ago, his status changed again. He couldn't even look at the holo-screen anymore. He'd already memorized what it said within sixty seconds.

_Private Fredrick Calison __ID#: 9800768 __Location: Flight Deck, Airduct 08 __Status: Deceased_

It took a while for it to set in. When it did, Travis had to sit down or the shakiness in his legs would have toppled him anyways. The throbbing pain in his chest increased monumentally.

One minute ago, after recovering enough to move, he typed in another name.

_Dr. Annabel Calison __ID#: 9801759 __Location: Crew Deck, Storage Unit 12 __Status: Severely injured [NOTICE: MEDICAL AID REQUESTED ASAP]_

Her heart was still beating. He clung to the sound, the fact that his love was still alive. It was the only thing that could keep him going.

He was now running. There was pain, and the echoes of his footsteps in the blood-stained hallway were probably attracting unwanted attention, but he didn't care. All that mattered now was reaching the _Kellion_ so he could get himself and Annabel off of the _Ishimura_, and he would do anything to do just that.

_But Fred had the cutter, so if one of those mutant-things shows…_

A near-deafening crash told Travis that a certain something had burst through a vent.

_Speak of the devil and he shall appear._

All he could do was run faster and hope. And faster he did run, but he could hear the thing's skittering, coming closer. Then he saw what he'd been waiting for, the door to the elevator room below the flight lounge. He'd seen the _Kellion_ dock six, no seven minutes ago. Someone must be there by now.

He screamed.

"Help! Oh god, HELP!"

No answer.

"HELP ME!!!"

Still no answer.

He was near the end of the hallway now, practically at the door. The thing was dangerously close. It was screeching.

He reached the door and started banging on it, continuing to scream.

"GODDAMNIT, HELP!"

Not thirty seconds later, he was on the floor, crawling backwards. A hissing, mutated human with bladed arms sprouted out of its shoulders, jaw split in half and snapping at him was perched before him. He was still yelling, but it had become incomprehensible gibberish.

A searing pain in his torso jolted through him, but he was only dimly aware that he had been impaled in the chest. Travis's attention was elsewhere, namely at the door.

It had opened.

A figure was standing in the doorway, decked out in full RIG gear and a plasma cutter in hand. But Travis was too far gone for any hope. The creature above him slashed at him again, and from the amount of blood pouring out of him, he knew he was going to die.

The last things that Travis Oeth knew was the loud sound of a cutter firing, inhuman screeching, and a faint vision of Fred looking down at him with sad eyes…


	4. Last word

Last word.

The last actions of a human, while appearing insignificant, can reveal much about humans as a whole it seems. Take for example, the three closely bonded humans who died separately but were, in spirit, very near one another.

The female was clinging to the last echoes of sanity when she died. Her last word: "Why?" reveals the human's unique, but possibly fatal questioning nature.

Humans have more questions than can be numbered. They are always asking, who, what, when, how, and above all else, why. In a sad, ironic sort of way, it was what brought them higher than was expected out of such weak beings, yet in the end kills them. There ability to ask leads to the ability to find an answer. And with these answers to the mysteries of the universe they ruled over the physically mightier creatures. But humans were not meant to rule. No one species was meant to rule. And so, they will fall. But that time will come slowly, and _homo sapiens_ will live it up for all it is worth.

The first male to die was holding on to his courage at the end. And he held fast. He did what needed to be done despite being afraid, and although he passed away in the end, he died bravely. And his last words reveal why he held on so long: because he cared for someone other than himself.

The human being's capability for the emotion love is astounding. The humans themselves do not even understand the concept of love completely. They are born selfish, taking whatever they require and not caring what the repercussions are. But this changes when one "falls in love".

Love. The caring of another living thing so much you would cast aside your own wellbeing for it. For instance, the love of a mother for her offspring is unequaled. If they had no food, she would give them all of her own. If they were threatened, she would destroy those who dared. And if it came down to someone dying, she would die gladly so her children could live. The love of the male for his sibling was perhaps not as strong, but it was strong enough. And that love gave him strength.

The last of the three, though second to die, had nothing but the barest hints of hope for survival to clasp onto. He had lost his best friend. He had lost all of his friends. His love was probably dead in his opinion, although she outlived him by a few hours. He had lost his sense of reality, his sense of safety. Even if he had lived, he would never have regained those things.

But even with nothing to hold on to, he kept going.

One of the humans' strongest traits is determination. The will to go on. The need to continue, even when all looks lost. And because of his determination, what had happened to the Ishimura will not go unknown. He and the others were the reason Isaac Clarke could even get aboard. And although crashing and dying on the docking bay doors would have been a much kinder fate to all involved, it had to be done. They had to survive so they could uncover the truth.

It is a shame that no one will remember these three. They will become nothing but numbers, and their hardships will go unnoticed. They deserve better.

[CECLRC LOG OFF]


End file.
